A/N: You have no idea how many times I've rewritten and re-read this chapter. If there are any typos, I apologize. I don't know if I'm satisfied, but why don't you have a read and let me know how I did.

Disclaimer: I cannot claim to own any recognizable characters or creations.

Silent Spider: Chapter 3

Outer city limits of Vienna, Austria

The gasoline of the purloined motorcycle lasted through a speedy chase and they were on the outskirts of Vienna before the thought of running out of fuel even strayed Clint's mind. Part of him wondered, with incredulousness, what she was doing—didn't she remember that he was the tracker when it came to her? She was his specialty and the years hadn't faded his ability to predict her movements and decision-making skills. It wasn't exactly hard to tail the Skoda until she ditched it for another vehicle with admirable speed and agility that reminded him of who exactly he was chasing.

People tended to forget that Clint Barton was more than just the archer and the nutcase of S.I.D. He was the boy who'd survived being orphaned and touring with a twisted circus, mentored by a man who'd be considered insane by today's standards, and he was the man who'd killed more men than he cared to think about before the age of nineteen. He was a tracker and more importantly, he'd been a friend. He had been a friend of a person who didn't simply befriend and indulge in simple acts of relaxation, such as letting people close and seeing her for who she truly was. At least, that was what he thought he'd been, five years ago. Time tended to change people and experiences reshaped them. She was enough evidence for that even though he refused to see it.

Clint wasn't sure what his reaction would be if he caught her (although 'caught' was such an ugly phrase that reminded him of a caged bird—the furthest thing from Natasha Romanov). The partner in him wanted to act on instinct and chastise her for her sloppiness. He couldn't believe her betrayal to everything S.H.I.E.L.D. stood for; to everything they had fought hard to protect and ensure. Most of all, he couldn't believe she'd gotten on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar again. On his radar. She was too smart for that. out of sight, out of mind, and all. Had he been foolish to hope she'd settled down somewhere, living the life she'd dreamed of having? Instead, she'd ended up with people like Leonum whatever-their-name-was. They weren't mere crooks and scum. It was fucking organized crime. And if they could get their hands on someone with the skillsets like Natasha Romanov, they were damn scarier than his source had established and than S.I.D. believed them to be.

And they need to know that, Barton, a voice sounding very much like his handler's reminded him, but he hesitated. Because the hurt of seeing her betray her former employers was less than the initial realization that she'd disappeared without warning from their partnership. It was all about hesitation. He'd managed to talk her into joining S.H.I.E.L.D. once although the mission objective had been to assassinate her on sight. Something about her has made him hesitate—and the fact she hadn't acted on the hesitation after noticing it had made him adamant in his attempt to assign her a second chance. Not only would S.H.I.E.L.D. have lost the unique chance of utilizing her vast experience and skillset, but he wouldn't have gotten the honor of being her partner, of seeing the humanity in emotional eyes after a particularly hard mission.

In hindsight, those memories were tainted by the bitter hurt of abandonment and the frail doubt and fear that she'd been playing him for all those years of their partnership, the breakdowns purposefully planted by her cunning mind, cultivated by the horrors of Red Room. He was enough of an asshole to doubt all of it and it made him angry—angry with him, angry at her, angry at everything. It was not a good mindset to be of (he knew that) and rage burned through him, though not as strongly as the hurt and betrayal and goddamn poisonous relief.

Clint had unknowingly waited five years for this chance (having been restrained by S.H.I.E.L.D. and Fury back when she first left, leaving him a cold trail by the time he'd been released from custody). Part of him hadn't wanted to chase her then, firmly believing in freewill and feebly hoping she'd return. That silly notion had since been overwritten with the bitter taste of betrayal and inward anger, and whatever coursed through his head and veins, he didn't want to hear or contemplate it in the fear that he wouldn't like what her resurfacing was doing to him.

The car door smacked open mid-drive and he barely registered the moving figure that rolled out of the still-moving vehicle seconds before the car collided with a stone fence, whipping dust and debris into the air—providing an excellent distraction, he had to give her that. He caught sight of the dark coat as she rounded a corner and pressed the accelerator. On foot, she had the advantage of stealth, but he knew her patterns and had the advantage of speed.

It bothered him that, even amidst the rainy chase, he had no idea if she was leading him on or genuinely trying to escape his passionate hunt. It was an obsession; he couldn't allow her to get away once more, not without telling him what he'd done wrong or hadn't seen five years ago. It wasn't to educate himself on people that he needed the answer. It was to be able to live with himself. And, although he didn't want to admit it, to face those green eyes and confront her (to be re-hurt again upon rejection).

He was no longer above the people Natasha had so often played so obviously in front of him. He was one of them. And the realization had flooded back as he'd recognized her as if she'd left ten days ago and not five years.

5 years and 1 month ago

"I'd never let you run," he vowed softly.

She stirred from her resting place in his lap. Her eyes sparkled in semi-challenge. "No?"

"Not without me," he said with determination, playing with a lock of her red hair.

"If S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn't so generous, what would you have done?" If they'd wanted to kill me when you brought me in. If they are going to stop being generous and forgiving.

Upon realizing the serious topic, he became unsure. "I dunno. If it had been now…"

She looked upwards, catching his eyes. "Yes?"

He exhaled. "I'd have helped you in a heartbeat."

"Promise me something, Clint," she murmured, voice wistful at his apparent loyalty.

"What?" he chuckled.

"Don't ever do that. Just… don't follow."

"What kind of talk is that?" he asked, not liking the tone of voice she was using.

"I'll let you know beforehand, don't worry."

"How?" he inquired drowsily, half in seriousness.

"Think of Greece," she said, closing her eyes in peaceful sleep.

We've never been to Greece, he had wanted to said, then had realized that Greece had been one of the destinations of their hunt. Greece had been the first time he'd been close enough to draw her blood—or, in their case, cut hair with an arrowhead.

Vienna – Present

Dammit, Barton!

He knew he shouldn't be following her if he wanted to, bizarrely, keep her name and appearance out of his report. That was logic, but Clint Barton had never been a particularly logical person unless it came to trajectories and wind factor. It was one of the more subtle reasons why he didn't have partners, aside from his charismatic personality (and frequent use of sarcasm at the most inappropriate times).

He'd been forced to discard the motorcycle an alley ago as she'd taken the chase to narrow alleys that he hadn't been able to maneuver the big bike through. In another time, (where he wasn't too preoccupied with having to track his goddamn former partner down as if she was the devil herself) he'd have kept it, finders keepers and all. It was a nice bike. Sure, he'd stolen it, but he figured that he had to enjoy some parts of life. Vintage motorcycles had sort of been his thing for a while. He had beauties stored in a couple places across Europe.

Now he was running, fueling his muscles with the anger of her recognition. Her face had tinged with numbness, a small spark had flared in recognition as she'd spotted him but done nothing to further communicate. Perhaps out of courtesy, he wondered, a warning. He didn't do subtle with the same grace. He was a hands-on guy. He had caught up with her, the soaked red hair piercing the dark gray night twelve yards in front of him. He must be looking like some psycho, he mused.

"Natasha!" he shouted, thankful when anger overruled the pathetic desperation he'd thought would penetrate his voice. She stopped, suddenly and surreally and only when he caught up did he realize why: it hadn't been his shouting of her name, it had been the dead end in front of her. As she spun around, he watched her take in the numerous factors, her mind assessing hundreds of options per second.

Her eyes met his again but rain obscured the emotion—if one were to be found. As he'd changed, she must have, too. His mind provided enough imagery of what she could be thinking about him. Did she feel disgust at his presence as he knew her to be feeling towards the men she could easily trick years ago—if you allowed yourself to be tricked in Natasha's book, you deserved it, and boy, had he allowed himself to fall headfirst. Anger flared in his expression, enough to catch her off guard and he pinned her confrontationally against the nearest dirty back alley wall. She said nothing—unwilling to meet his eyes with anything but resentment and (tellingly) failed. She attempted a frustrated hiss but to no avail.

He tried to be harsh and harden his features with hatred and disapproval, but could, neither, succeed. For what seemed like eternity, they avoided the other's gaze with breathy gasps. It gave him time to study her close up, to see what the years had done to her in a foolish attempt to try and read what she'd been doing the past five years. His anger became a faint memory and he made the same mistake as others had done an unforgiving number of times in the past. She looked every bit as beautiful as she'd always been, every bit as deadly in the black practical wear that mirrored his own, albeit designed by criminals. The moment he wavered, his expression softening, she took her chance and a sharp jab into his side sent him backwards, a sharp intake of breath interrupting the rhythm that had synchronized to her own. He damned himself for getting lost in the moment.

From there on, the moment evaporated and he saw her morph into what she'd always been—the Black Widow, danger to all of opposite sex or conviction. She fought ravenously, blocking and parrying his moves almost intimately, cold eyes assessing him for every breath he took and movement he made. He cursed himself for his ridiculous sentiment but was unable to fight back with the same mindless passion. He'd felt dead inside the times he'd managed to forget her betrayal (he could count then with single digits) in the past five years.

He ducked a painful left hook and barely managed to dodge the roundhouse kick that followed it. His body flooded with adrenaline as his mind flooded with conflict. This wasn't just a criminal—this was Tasha.

She didn't hold back, and so he ended up on the ground as the result of a momentary slip in balance (he was never trained with the same fervor in close combat)—a moment she had obviously used to her advantage. She didn't pin him down, merely placed her boot-clad foot and calf on his torso, pressing down, applying enough pressure to incite bruises but no crack from his protesting ribs.

"What!" he shouted in a growl, angry and upset with her. He damned himself for losing himself and cracking his façade in the foolish hope she'd do the same. He struggled against her weight and she kneeled down, straddling his abdomen in a fashion that wasn't the least reassuring or pleasant—not with the cold look in her eyes. Her strong thighs squeezed his sides and she'd caught his hands mid-air, keeping them stiffly secured with equal pressure. She looked like she seethed inner rage, the poster child for the success of the creation of an obedient assassin. The prospect of leaving her was as unbearable as having to eliminate her. "Do it, Tasha! Do it!"

He gritted his teeth and rain began to pour and something stirred in her features. In the cover of the night, her eyes turned expressive and seemed to tell him—briefly—of regret. It was gone before he could analyze it properly. The apparent stalemate could be ended easily. Anger burned through him.

Clint had been the compliant albeit standoffish S.H.I.E.L.D. (and later, S.I.D.) Agent since her departure. How long had it been? Obviously not long enough if her very presence and touch made him crack and tremble. It wasn't even skin-on-skin contact; she was wearing leather gloves. He wanted to cackle out like a madman. He'd found her, only to have lost her. It was pathetic.

She opened her mouth as if to speak, as if to convey some explanation but the words died on her lips. She caught his eyes with reluctance, no longer actively trying to harm him. The rain splashed against their faces (and, in her case, back) in what would for sure result in a cold. Did she have someone to tend to her, then? "What, waiting for your goons to come finish it off?" he spat, furious at her betrayal, thinking of how familiar she'd been with the members of the criminal group. She was better than this! Bitterness at her departure from S.H.I.E.L.D. roared in him. He wanted to hurt her, he wanted to make her hurt like he'd been hurt, but he knew better and guilt rose to the surface.

'No,' she mouthed, letting go of his hands, eyeing him strangely as if trying to assess what he'd do. He was trying to assess the very same. Not what she'd do, but what he would do. He knew what he should do. She was the enemy—what he'd seen had been enough to prove that. His throat was sore from emotion. He wanted to cry and sob and did none of those things. None of them were useful or pragmatic, and if there was anything Clint Barton had been the past five years, it had been useful and pragmatic, almost numb to a fault.

"Tell me this isn't true," he begged, his voice soft and breaking. He made no attempt to get up as she detangled herself, putting her walls back into place. "Tell me you're working for someone. Not the guys in there!"

Someone like me. He could name dozens of intelligence agencies that would have taken her in. Yet she did nothing to convince him that was the case.

He hadn't cracked for five years. For five years, he'd eaten the emotions that toyed within him and ate him up in the wee hours of dawn where insomnia was at its fullest. He had mumbled I'mfine to whoever had dared to confront him until Fury had shipped him off to S.I.D. as their new problem.

Anger took her features but depleted too quickly into regret and indifference. Her shoulders sagged as her breathing returned to normal. His hands scraped at the ground as he got up. She looked so… devastatingly similar to the partner he'd had five years ago. The same pale skin, the same vibrant red hair (albeit slighter longer by now, but if he knew her well enough, she changed hairstyles frequently), the same tension in her body that wouldn't fade, as it was a physically expressed sign of her alertness. As if it had been a month since their departure, and yet so different as if he couldn't recognize the Black Widow in front of him.

'Go.' She didn't trust her voice and he nearly snickered. Didn't he deserve some sort of explanation? No. She'd left. He was too unimportant to tell anything. She hadn't even told him that she left. One day he'd just been abandoned. Left to return to solo missions and sniper scopes and lonely microwave dinners in foreign cities.

"No," he protested. I just found you. Protest flooded her face and she grew annoyed and angry at his display of disobedience. Her body language grew confrontational and she conjured a knife from somewhere on her body, stalking predatorily towards him. Her eyes asked him not to make her do this. They spoke of softer things.

She rolled her eyes and let out a frustrated groan. The knife embedded itself an inch from his ear into the wooden door. She hadn't been trying, he could tell. 'Alone?' she mouthed.

"From the day you left," he said without hesitation. Something crossed her features. "S.H.I.E.L.D. knows I'm in Vienna, yeah." For some reason, the words came out reproachful and judgmental. "No backup," he informed her and wondered if his contact would find his corpse dead in the river the next day. It disturbed him less than it should have. He was also stretching the truth a little, because it was S.I.D. that backed him, not S.H.I.E.L.D. although he suspected they'd never lose track of him, either.

He shouldn't trust her. She had had five years to forget about him and make new allegiances and foster trust issues with someone else. Yet the look in her eyes informed him that there had been nobody like him, defiant in his quest to humanize her. It had been suicidal then and it was even more now, but if he hadn't been important enough to tell five years ago, at least he'd be important enough to kill now. He didn't want to speculate too long on that. Natasha had always made him adamant to an unhealthy degree. She'd held his respect, his trust, his life on numerous occasions, his friendship and, to an unspecifiable degree, his love. Not the sappy movie love, but enough of it to make his heart singed with repressible jealousy when she was assigned intimate missions. They'd never spoken of it, but she'd known. She had known that it bothered him when it shouldn't have. And because he was her partner—her friend, best friend even—he'd repressed it, embraced its presence but never spoken of it. That was the kind of love between them, devotion.

It had still been new and experimental when she'd quitted on him and on S.H.I.E.L.D. She'd had the audacity to run and turn herself into the escape artist they'd all speculated she could be, leaving him looking like the grandest fool alive.

Something very un-Tasha happened. (But then again, she'd made a habit of taking every expectation of her and shattering it, and just because he was the best at reading her didn't mean he fully read her and predicted these bouts of unpredictability). Her expression softened—had she been this expressive in their partnership, he had to wonder?—and she began to walk away. She didn't run, she didn't prepare another attack (he wouldn't think it below her—she'd tramped all over his dignity and liability before) but halted after a few steps, looking back as if no time had passed and she was irascibly waiting for him to join her to mess hall and scare the living shit out of some recruits. Perhaps it was the vulnerability that determined his choice.

He wasn't sure why he followed the redhaired assassin, either.

Don't think anything's resolved just yet. Clint's dazed, not forgiving her. She did make a fool out of him. Plus, he has much to discover about her and the five years she's been doing who-knows-what. Well, I do. Sort of.

Don't forget to leave a review!

- L.